When my mother was pregnant with me, she begged her obstetrician for an abortion. She didn’t want to be pregnant yet again, didn’t want another child. Yet, she had no choice. She had to give birth to me.
“I adored you the moment you popped out, of course,” she says.
The last time she told me this abortion story, she was 95 and I was 67. She’s been telling me this story all my life. I’ve spent decades wondering why and whether she really loves me. Letting me leave home at age 15, abandoning me in my own apartment at age 17, not wanting to see my firstborn, her first grandchild, until he was older and more interesting. (“Newborns are so boring. They don’t do anything.”) So many reasons to wonder—did she adore me?
I used to take her treatment of me personally. It hurt deeply, having a mother who didn’t seem to care all that much whether I existed. But I have learned what matters is that I love myself and have found others who love me as well. My mother’s lack of depth or intimacy needn’t hold me back from becoming all that I can be. I don’t take her treatment of me personally anymore.
A Change of Attitude
It takes a change of attitude to see ourselves as worthy of love and to let go of the resentments towards those who have hurt us. That can take a lot of work. Painful work. But it is worthwhile facing it.
It takes a change of attitude to see ourselves as worthy of love and to let go of the resentments towards those who have hurt us.
How I started out in life wasn’t my choice. How I have continued in life is my choice. I chose to love me. I wish everyone made that choice, although it’s hard work getting to that point of self-love. It was for me anyway.
When I was 21, it was my most fervent dream to believe I was good—innately good, and to feel it and be it and operate from that truth. It took decades for me to embody that truth, even though I was good from the very beginning. At first it was just a dream, a hope, and then I began to believe I am love.
It is true for all of us. Many of us just don’t know it or believe it yet. But you will. If that is what you want to believe, you will know you are love.
I found the goodness within me and believe it to be true. I have faith in a Higher Power that loves me.
As for my mom, all I can do is pray for her. And I do. God will handle the rest.