++++++++++++++++++++++++++
OK, so I am choosing not to let this turn of the seasons that has brought us all to another American Mother’s Day pass without saying something about my own mother. I can’t say I am happy at doing so, but here I am.
I believe that I wrote recently in a post about what my daughter and her husband finally remembered about what made their little dog, Who Who, perpetually wish to destroy all children. A gathering in their home, a friend’s five-year-old daughter alone in the kitchen with the dog, a sudden screech of pain from puppy followed by the menacing snarl of a wolf (all from this then 2 1/2 –year-old Pomeranian-Chihuahua mix small dog).
Of course the child denied hurting the dog. Nobody every knew what she did. But the dog, being a very smart animal, decided at the instant she suffered pain at the hands of this child that forevermore she would simply do everything in her power to vanquish children of ANY age from her universe.
Of course this pattern only worked as clearly as it did because Who Who has always been a cherished pet raised without abuse of any kind until that moment. If she HAD been previously abused, abused from birth, how would she be any different than she is now. After all, it’s only possible to HATE children so much – and this dog appears to be maxed out in her defensive hate just as she is. (She nipped my grandson, hence her new home with grandma.)
++
I don’t see my mother’s hatred of me as operating much differently than I see it in this dog. True, my mother in her human body was SUPPOSED to operate differently, but she didn’t. She didn’t, I believe, because she was operating on the level of physiological reaction only and had no choice any more than this dog does.
(Not that I ever did anything to hurt my mother, even though she was convinced I tried to kill her when I was being born. But SOME people had hurt my mother when she was very little and what she did to me was caused by this early harm.)
Trying to think up reasons why a mother such as mine was could continually do what she did to me for 18 years is actually ridiculous. She was simply so changed in her physiological development in reaction to the traumas of her own earliest years that what was left of her was an ANIMAL rather than a HUMAN being.
It would have been as impossible for anyone to have reasoned my mother out of how she felt/thought of me and acted toward me as it would be to change this dog of mine. Considering that our species has the distinction in all of Creation to have BOTH animal and a higher-order spiritual side to us, it is when early trauma changes a body that the animal side takes over that potential for the kind of insane abuse my mother rendered toward me becomes not only possible, but as likely as it is for a dog like Who Who to ‘decide’ in an unconscious instant that destroying children is preferable for her own survival rather than to act any differently.
To think any differently about my mother would be to anthropomorphize her. Sorry, big word – but the right one:
: to attribute human form or personality to
: to attribute human form or personality to things not human
My mother was NOT fully human – certainly not a ‘modern’ evolved human being. She was a trauma-changed, evolutionarily altered VERSION of a human being. This is NOT the same as having modern human abilities.
Do I PITY my dead mother? Yes, I do. I do not believe that she ever knew during the 18 long years I lived in her home that what she did to me was wrong. Not once. Not for an instant. Never. She did not have the capacity to know that any more than Who Who does – or ever will.
++++
S.T.E.P. Parenting Program – CHECK IT OUT HERE!
AND please think about this:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Stop the Storm 
You must be logged in to post a comment.