Session #3 - Fears of the Mother Revisited.

Revelations and lots of them this past week.

Lots of parts I will not talk about here. Some parts of my family history people already know or need to know to explain a few things.

I HAD an older sister, she was 3 yrs older than me. She died in an accident at the age of 4.

Now, I've always been humbled by the fact that my parents marriage withstood. That their faith and faith in each other didn't point fingers at what happened. They will be married 39 yrs this May.

Fast forward to now. The last three months or so. Me spinning and drowning in anxiety and admittedly not being an attentive parent. Crazy enough, anxiety about not being a good parent, wife, person in this life. Vicious circle.

So I was circling and my girl, my girl was falling with me.

Nora started stuttering when she talked. Nora started have tummy issues. Nora became afraid to go poop. This has all cleared, except a little stuttering, in the last couple weeks.

Somewhere in the chaos, I voiced the fear that Nora was internalizing and processing all the emotions she saw coming out of me. Hind sight 20/20, we think the previous issues were her way of responding to the stress.

Are you following this?

(My husband says I tend to change subjects quickly and give him backlash)

Revelation.

Losing a child is a horrific thing. I can only imagine the scars on my parents souls.

Then the thought came to me I was there too. What did I see or hear, absorb through faces during those months and years afterwards.? If Nora's character could be impressed upon in a few months, oh wow.

I can not blame my parents for this, it is not their fault for feeling grief and expressing it.

There are so many parts of my character and emotional make-up that make sense if I think in these terms.

I was young(13 mths old at time of accident). As Ann said today, children that young just interpret faces, tone in voices. She used the example that if two adults were fighting in a room with a child that age...the child would mostly likely cry in response to the tension.

As one of my friends said, it is something psychology will always debate. How much of our personalities is formed in those first few years.

The question is now, is my tentative, non-confrontational personality a result of that? From seeing strong emotions, thinking they were scary, so as an adult I shy away from it?

Does my tendency to be introverted come from this? Clarification for some of you. I am extroverted when around people I've known for a while. Put me in a room with people I don't know, ask me to go to a mommy group when no FRIEND will be there to meet me..terrifying.

Does the fear of taking risks? So calculated are the chances I take. Because risk = hurt, injury, failure, disappointment.

I KNOW my parents love/loved myself and younger sister. They protected us, sometimes maybe a little too much. They lived in fear of losing us, even now. Ann said something today about people projecting their own internalized anxieties onto others.

My parents' discipline, restrictions and confidence as parents was forever changed on that day my sister died. Ever fiber of them wanting to let us go, but not knowing how. I can't imagine have a conscious and subconscious argument raging in me like that. (But I sort of can, because the anxiety attacks are my soul trying to break out of a prison of sorts )

If you could prevent pain, would you? To what extent?

All that anxiety behind the rules and limitations on my adolescence taught me, my inner being the same fears. There's an expression 'sins of the father are revisited on the son'....this is more 'fears of the mother revisited on the daughter.'....

And now, I find myself a mom. Fearing failure, fearing losing a child, fearing not raising them right. Poised to make the same mistakes?

No parents wants to see their child in pain, but we must fall and learn to get up. No parent wants to see their child struggle. No parent wants their child to question past decisions. But it happens because it's life. And some people are meant to walk it with more grace than others. Grace can also come from walking through those situations and finding the meaning and strength beyond.

So today's session. A success. A victory. A small saving Grace.

**this will probably be edited a million times, because my brain will need to process something else(Or I'll find a typo, which if you've been reading long enough you realize there are lots of)