So why is peace of mind, currently, mine, yet again?
Well—my perspective concerning my mother’s frown, directing itself at me from the great beyond, has changed for the better in this way:
Preceding my dad’s sudden death, Mom and I had been fast friends, and during those 60 years of my life, she and I had had no conscious clue of this fact: The smooth sailing nature of our close friendship had been largely based in my not saying no to anything she’d asked of me ever since I (nearing my third birthday) had witnessed my parents suddenly finding my baby sister dead. And as Janet’s death was utterly unexpected, my mommy’s deeply depressed frowning visage, over the next several months, had terrified my personal sense of safety into believing myself a very bad little girl while simultaneously, our extended family had been cast into a deeply shocked, heart wrenching aura of despair, being that six weeks before Janet’s sudden death, my paternal grandfather had died, suddenly, of a massive heart attack at the age of 52. So, let’s picture the back-to-back deaths of loved ones leaving three year old me scared half to death as to who might disappear, next, unless I was such a good little girl that nothing bad would devastate anyone I’d loved, ever again.
With the passage of weeks dragging into month after month of deeply bereft mourning, my undeveloped processor labored painfully through my extended family’s relentless darkly clouded storm, which my three year old self found much too confoundedly terrifying to even begin to fathom until my daddy followed the doctor’s advice, and soon after my fourth birthday, another baby sister, who’d looked exactly like Janet, appeared, and as everyone, most especially, my mommy, regained their smiles, so deeply relieved was I about the sun shining, again, that my persona’s perpetual care-giving smile was born, suggesting that these polarizing experiences had taken control over our lives during such an early stage of my personality development that I’d rarely felt resentful when my needs seemed to be less important to me than satisfying the needs expressed by my loved ones, my coveted reward being the relieved recipient of smile after smile.
As to the presence of this new baby, named Lauren—you can bet your life that I did everything in my power to assure myself that nothing bad would ever happen to her as had happened to Janet. And upon reflection, I believe that my need to take good care of everyone’s needs before my own had seemed so readily forthcoming from within the depths of my being that no one was aware of when too much was asked of a good little girl for this reason:
Each time I’d unconsciously felt a sense of latent guilt erupt from deep within (based in my unidentified three year old misconception of having been so bad as to not deserve to express any emotional reactions other than those that would produce smiles, all around), that every heart-stopping pang of guilt caused me to swallow my reply of ‘No, I don’t want to do that’ so quickly that all that could be seen was my smile suggesting ‘Sure, leave it to me’. (Today’s string of insights makes me wonder if Hercules had begun to shoulder the woes of the world—beginning at the age of three as did I, which explains why that care-giving trait became hardwired into the very depths of my nature way before a sunshiny (deeply guilt ridden) little girl grew up to become a tireless, care-giving woman, extraordinaire.
Following my beloved father’s sudden death of a brain aneurysm when he and Mom were both 87, I’d freely spent the greater portion of every day, over the next two years, with my deeply grieving mother, whose widowhood had broken her heart. It was not until I’d felt personal need to untangle my grieving heart from our emotional enmeshment for two days at a time that my mother’s sad-eyed frown had begun to settle itself on me—the same frown that had swallowed my mommy’s smile when I, at the age of three, had guilted myself into feeling so bad as to not have felt good enough to receive unconditional love—and thus did Mom’s sad eyed, frowning disappointment in me appear every time I’d conjured up my mother’s spirit gazing down at me from on high following her death at 100 years of age..
So how, you might ask, has my perception of my mom, frowning down at me from the great beyond changed for the better, over these past several days?
Well, the answer to that question came to me as if I’d had personal need to resolve a detailed story problem, so with thinking caps straightened on our heads, let’s begin to assemble pertinent details, one after another:
Before Janet’s sudden death, Mom had smiled ever so lovingly at me.
After Janet’s sudden death, Mom stopped smiling.
Before my grandpa’s sudden death (he’d adored me), my extended family had smiled at me
After Grandpa and Janet’s mysterious sudden disappearances, no one smiled, leaving me, just shy of three, feeling utterly bereft, deeply baffled, all alone and as depressed as everyone else—for many months.
As children blame themselves, undeservedly, I’d held myself personally accountable, subconsciously, to ‘fix’ everyone’s miseries—and thus was The Fixer born—who, having begun to develop at the age of three, has had such a stronghold on my self image that my think tank has to consciously rein her in, to this very day, because everyone’s dilemmas continue to feel so thoroughly woven throughout every fiber of my being that differentiating between my problems and the problems of others continues to be difficult for my sense of clarity to identify, which is why I so often ceel need to call upon the serenity prayer to remind me to determine whether a problem in need of resolution is beyond my control. (Like holding myself accountable for resuscitating my mother’s smile each time her persona had sagged as soon as she and I had been alone, once widowhood (and her own lingering sense of guilt) had broken her heart.
Thank goodness—via astute sessions of therapy—both sides of my nature (the fear based, guilt-ridden side and the courageous, self confident side) have grown well-practiced at working intuitively through inner conflict so as to offer my processor’s new sense of wholeness sound reason to place my trust in my intelligent self-confident self-image so as to feel peaceful while choosing one side over the other. And currently, courage has become my go to side much more often than ever before. Not because wisdom comes with age, but because it has become my conscious choice to quietly seek within until an insight-laden train of thought pops out of my mouth, thus minimizing those times when a pang of anxiety loosens the reins on an emotional reaction that may prove to be defensively rash rather than responding with a calm and patient, mutually respectful sense of having considered an issue from both sides.
And now, as my mind has tired—though we’ve not yet resolved today’s story problem—I’ll respectfully offer my think tank a rest so as to continue to add rational details, one by one (which will brighten the fresh perspective of my mind’s eye concerning the change for the better that currently envisions my beloved mother smiling down at me from on high) when next we meet.
🙋🏻♀️🥰Annie
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