Today I pulled some of my mother’s artwork out of storage. I’ve decided to bring her energy into my home, have the pieces framed, and give them a prominent place on my wall.
My childhood was a nightmare. But in thrashing through the healing process, my goal became making peace with her — even from the grave.
I look for things to appreciate about her. Little things. Sometimes an image of her laughing — the lighthearted kind — comes to mind. I long to remember her with kindness.
Funny, though: as much as I work at this, if she were alive today, it still could not happen. I tried approaching her while she was living. Often, I was met with such fierce defensiveness. If you wronged her once, you were permanently added to the list of betrayers.
I can still hear her saying it out loud:
“You betrayed me just like your father.”
I remember the moment as if it were yesterday. She was driving me and my girlfriends to a dance hall in town. I went inside to see if it was open while my girlfriends stayed in the car, buzzing among themselves about my period being late.
My mother always waited until the witnesses were gone.
Then she lit into me so ferociously it felt as though my aura left my body — torn loose and drifting into the night air at the edge of her breath.
Funny thing was, I had never even kissed a boy. Unless missed periods came from playing romantic 45s and daydreaming about Dave Berg, she was wildly off base. I could have had a tumor for all she knew. It didn’t matter. In her mind, I had betrayed her.
It took me much later in life to understand that dynamic. Though she was never formally diagnosed, many people with borderline personality disorder experience betrayal or perceived abandonment as emotionally permanent, making trust almost impossible to restore.
And there I was: a miscounted cycle, an errant month, sentenced to carry the sins of falsely betraying my emotionally dysregulated mother.
Funny how I can write about it now without being triggered. That’s some damn good work.
I’ll frame and hang the artwork: four butterfly species rendered in watercolor pencil. The fourth is almost complete — but not quite. She died before she could finish it.
I’ll hang it beside the others anyway.
Life isn’t perfect. We try our best, but unfinished thoughts, intentions, relationships, and artwork happen every day.
Seeing her work on my wall will remind me daily that compassion does not require forgetting. Sometimes it simply means seeing clearly and choosing softness anyway.
